Kids, Play With Your Water

Yves Béhar’s flair for child-focused design is having a bit of a ripple effect. Béhar, the founder of fuseproject, the designer of the XO laptop computer, and an occasional Google-gadget creator, is now making his mark on the children’s- beverage industry with the packaging for Y Water, a colorful, jack-shaped container with a dual purpose—first a bottle, then a toy.

Rather than stick these bottles in the recycling bin, kids can use them as Lego-like building blocks. The wide (and biodegradable) rubber band connectors, or Y Knots, that fasten the bottles together will be available soon. (It’s consumerism at its best—drink more, and get more toys!) If parents don’t want to have to step over piles of three-pronged bottles, they can go to the company’s Web site, www.ywater.us, and request a mailer for recycling the bottles.

Given the debate about toxins that may or may not be released from plastic containers, Y Water’s founder, Thomas Arndt, was careful to choose materials that would be safe for children and the environment. The bottles are made from Eastman’s Eastar copolyester, a completely recyclable plastic that doesn’t leach chemicals.

“With Y Water, we wanted to address parents’ concerns about the calorie count, healthfulness, and organic quality of the products they give their children while pleasing kids too,” Arndt says. If Béhar’s bottle design alone doesn’t pique their interest, perhaps the borderline-gross-sounding names of the waters will—Muscle Water, Bone Water, Immune Water, and Brain Water. But the ick-factor stops there—with flavors that include spearmint oil, lemon, strawberry, carrot, and rosemary—this new water may not be all child’s play.

Y Water is currently sold at Whole Foods Markets in Southern California and will soon be available nationwide at www.amazon.com.